A snarky young Brit, Mathew "Film Brain" Buck hosts "Bad Movie Beatdown" on Channel Awesome. By his own admission, Buck is following the Nostalgia Critic's example, but there's nothing nostalgic about the crap he reviews. Before he became a video contributor, Buck wrote articles for the site and was (and continues to be) a moderator on the forums.

In addition to BMB, Buck has a sister show "Projector," where he does a quick (usually) spoiler-free look at recent films in the UK, often ahead of their release in the US. In general, BMB is more comedic and about Film Brain poking fun at movies, while Projector is more like an actual review show and about Mathew Buck giving his honest critical opinion.

Provides examples of (including tropes he has pointed out in the movies he reviews):

Subverted with Epic Movie when Silas shoots Mr. Tumnus,note (Matthew does laugh at this, though he acknowledges the timing was off.) but then it stops being funny when he keeps shooting.

Played straight with a cameo by Stephen King in Monkeybone, where Edgar Allan Poe mocks King for being a fraidy cat, or, to quote Mr. Poe: "King, you pussy!"

Twice in Night at the Museum II: one with the inch-high Roman soldier running furiously through the grass on the White House lawn, and then the camera pulls back to show a human's eye view of the lawn, which looks completely undisturbed. The second time, the inch-high Roman soldier goes into an epic, slow-motion leap clearly spoofing 300 only to come down and viciously attack a full-sized bad guy's boot.

Acknowledged that the head-butting scene, following the line, "nobody wins with a head-butt" in Paul Blart: Mall Cop was the only funny scene in the entire film.

"See, it's funny because it's Robert Patrick and he was the T-1000! ... Okay, I thought it was funny, so shut up."

He even highlights two jokes in Breaking Wind: one being the "Noobs" emerging from the water when wearing swim fins, and the other being about vampires unable to control their thirst (although he admitted that the latter quickly went into Overly Long Gag territory).

In his review of Jack and Jill, he said the only funny jokes were the one about Al Pacino having only one Oscar and the part where Pacino sees his embarrassing Dunkin Donuts commercial and demands all copies be destroyed.

He admits in his review of xXx that the opening bridge stunt is genuinely impressive.

Seltzer and Friedberg and Craig Moss; the creators of infamous spoof films like Date Movie, Epic Movie and Breaking Wind, are deranged maniacs who make gross-out spoof movies to satisfy their own scatological sexual desires.

John McClane has suffered some kind of psychological warping from his time fighting terrorists, to the point where he's degenerated into a Blood Knight who mostly experiences pleasure when killing people. He may also have superpowers.

Film Brain points out that Albert Einstein was attending university when The Time Machine takes place, rather than already being a patent clerk as the film asserts.

He also points this out in Hudson Hawk. The movie explicitly said it's set in 1981, which only makes the multiple Nintendo references confusing.note (Though Donkey Kong was released in arcades in 1981, it was in the tail end of the year, and few people would've known who made the game.)

Eddie: What's Nintendo?

Film Brain: That's actually a good question Eddie since the NES didn't come out until 1985. Oops!

Also in 10,000 BC, where he points out the use of boats, pulleys, scaffolding, and telescopes, all of which weren't invented until thousands of years later.

Author Appeal: Although he has reviewed several films starring Kevin James, Film Brain has gone out of his way to say that he does think James is a likeable actor.

Author's Saving Throw: invokedKnowing full and well the potential (and actually quite real) backlash reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End could cause, Film Brain had Welshy do a counterpoint to the review to display some of the legitimate arguments that could be made against his, while still giving his honest opinion on the subject.

Awesome McCool Name: "I should mention it is directed by someone named Ace Hannah. Regardless of what I'm about to say, that name is frickin' awesome!"

As many of his reviews show, such as The Dilemma, he does not like homophobia.

Sexualized violence against women, too, judging from the disgusted tone of voice he uses when describing such scenes. The ending of The Cavern in particular (which ends in the middle of a rape scene played purely for shock value) sends him into a rage, where he says the movie can go fuck itself, and says it may be the worst movie ever. This is a man who has watched Fat Slags, Bear, and The Asylum flicks.

The Condemned seems to do it for him, as well, judging by the fact that he actually interrupts his summary of the movie to deliver a several-minutes-long rant about the film'shamfisted, hypocritical, and just plain unfortunate message.

In Film Brain's introduction for his review of Prometheus, he says how the more he thought about the movie after his first Projector review, the angrier it made him. This anger comes out over how the scientists of Prometheus are acting unscientific.

Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: According to him, Breaking Wind relies on "the three F's: farts, fucking, and more fucking farting!"

Brick Joke: In his review of The Hangover: Part II, he consults a thesaurus to look up the word "again" in attempt to make his commentary less redundant and is pleased when he finds the word "recurrently." He then uses the word later in the review.

Broken Aesop: Pointed out in his review of Stealth, where a big theme is the debate on whether machines should fight human conflicts. The protagonist thinks they should not, as he feels that would desensitize soldiers to combat, and we are expected to side with him... except earlier in the film, the same character had pulled off an absurdly difficult bombing mission in a populated area with no collateral damage, which played out like an achievement in a video game. Crosses over into a bit of Harsher in Hindsight as well, as unmanned military aircraft are now science fact and the same debate has crossed over into Real Life.

Butt Monkey: So far, he has been beaten up five times by other reviewers.

Comedic Sociopathy: In his own reviews he comes across as pretty stable, but in crossovers he moves into outright sadism, taking gleeful pleasure in subjecting his fellow reviewers to his terrible movies; he's kidnapped people at least twice for the sole purpose of forcing them to do reviews with him.

It's implied he murdered the person who loaned him Equilibrium, but the character reappears alive in the Seraphim Falls review so who knows.

Conflict Ball: Calls on Bride Wars for what he feels are stupid reasons for the plot, which even their fiances point out.

Lt. Ben "Big" Gannon in Stealth will do anything to get his girlfriend (Lt. Kara "Guns" Wade) back... including launching unprovoked military strikes on Russia and North Korea, who have nuclear weapons.

Mathew: Enjoy the mushroom clouds, zeroes.

Dr. Larry Lupin in Awake, due to being set up as the Red Herring villain, only to turn out to be the only good surgeon on the team. Meaning he's still an alcoholic, lazy, slovenly excuse for a doctor... whom we're expected to root for.

FDR and Tuck in This Means War, who abuse their CIA credentials to stalk the woman they both have a crush on, and torture a terrorist in a scene Played for Laughs. FDR is the bigger jerk of the two due to Tuck having a Morality Pet son, so naturally he's the one the Love Interest chooses at the end.

He calls one on himself in the second part of his 2012 review, where he halts the review momentarily and explains that in his original review, what was to immediately follow was a joke that would have been in very bad taste in light of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. He instead explains why the scene the joke was about is pointless, exploitative, and pathetic (at the time of the film's release), and states that his purpose is not to mock any tragedy, only the film.

The scene in Deck The Halls where the protagonists, who are Sitcom Arch-Nemeses to each other, trick each other into catcalling their own daughters also got this reaction.

This was also his reaction to the mean-spirited attacks on twihards in the credits of Breaking Wind

Arguably his best use of this ever? Epic Movie. Twice. He doesn't even need to speak. Two incredibly lame jokes are simply followed by a reaction shot of him looking pissed-off while comedy "waa-waa-waaaaa-waaaaah" music plays.

Dumbass Has a Point: He agrees with one of the gangsters in While She Was Out that they should have fled the city after killing a security guard instead of chasing the protagonist, whose only fault was annoying them.

In the first season, Film Brain would sometimes include out-of-place scenes paralleling similar subplots or stupid moments in the movies, such as getting into a confusing chase with a homicide detective and losing his day job as a salesman. Now the show is just Strictly Formula reviewing.

The first few episodes of Projector were unscripted and had Matthew inviting his friends to discuss the film. Projector is now a one-man show and Matthew rarely goes unscripted, unless there aren't enough clips of the movie.

Easter Egg: In his The Happening video a freeze frame reveals the film poster for Diaryofthe Dead, the following weeks video on Diary of the Dead has a freeze frame shot of the DVD case of Dead Set.

Eight Deadly Words: Invoked Mathew frequently has this reaction to the characters in the horror movies he reviews, to the point where he sometimes doesn't even tell the viewer their names, instead referring to them by a negative character trait (such as "Whiny" or "Slut") or some variation of "Dead Meat."

Enemy Mine: He and Braeden stop in mid-battle to punch out the room service at their hotel and drag him into their room during Haunted Mansion.

Esoteric Happy Ending: Invoked In the Live Wire review, he points out that while Pierce Brosnan has defeated the bad guys and gotten back with his ex-wife, all the people he was assigned to protect died.

During Seagal Month, he doesn't even bother learning the names of Steven Seagal's characters, just referring to each of them as Seagal.

Even before that, in the Seraphim Falls review, he refers to Pierce Brosnan's and Liam Neeson's characters as "Pierce" and "Liam."

In the direct-to-video Wesley Snipes vehicle The Marksman, Snipes' character doesn't have a name, referred only as "The Painter". FB refuses to call him that so he sticks to Snipes.

In the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning review, Film Brain and Welshy declare the names of the four deadmeat young people aren't worth learning and refer to them as Deadmeat 1, Deadmeat 2, etc., through the entire review.

"Suicide is a noble act if you donate your organs." (Seven Pounds.) Film Brain was not happy about this one. Also strikes a chord when he did that review as he lost someone to suicide, and genuinely hated the movie unlike most others he reviews.

"So remember, if you kill bad people, you'll be celebrated as the hero that you are - by CHILDREN no less! I think I found a film even more morally repugnant than Seven Pounds." (Parting Shots)

"Murder is empowering for women, and if you have an abusive spouse you should kill them." (While She Was Out)

"Fictional violence is exactly the same as real violence." (The Condemned)

And if you enjoy watching fictionalized violence, you're a monster. And everything that does contain has to be censored, for the children!

Faux Symbolism: Whenever an instance of this occurs in a film he's reviewing, Film Brain gleefully points it out with his "SYMBOLISM!" catchphrase, as seen in the page image above. invoked

Fetish Fuel: He name drops the trope In-Universe. He specifically mentions in an interview that "You know you've made it on That Guy With The Glasses when you're on the TVTropes Fetish Fuel page." He even did a livestream reading off entries from that wiki, getting squicked out, and saying that Doug Walker "lives for this stuff".

During his crossover review of Big Momma's House: Like Father, Like Son with The Rap Critic, Buck makes a comment about saving the Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel for Todd in the Shadows. Three months later, he and Todd do just that.

Pointed out that the dad's list of "do not do that" actions in Project X were essentially a laundry list of what was going to happen.

Fourth Date Marriage: When characters are rushing into marriage (Christmas with the Kranks, When in Rome), Mathew will tell them to slow down a bit.

Freudian Slip: In the Van Helsing review: "…and get confronted by the last of Dracula's breasts— I mean, brides. Heh heh, seriously. With cleavage like that, you can't blame me for the odd nip slip — slip — SHIT!"

Gratuitous Rape: This, above all else, truly pissed him off when reviewing The Condemned. He especially hated The Cavern for doing this. Conversely, he also gave props to The Purge for not taking that route.

Girl-on-Girl Is Hot: He was intensely disappointed when they cut away from a girl-on-girl kissing scene in Transmorphers, saying that the lesbianism was the only interesting part of the film.

Hostile Show Takeover: Professor Celluloid attempts this at the beginning of the Ratatoing review, by doing a scathing review of Die Hard (because the terrorists are German, and Alan Rickman is British). When this is cut off, he responds by convincingly disguising his copy of "Ratatoing" as one of "Ratatouille."

Hypocrisy: He calls out Gamer for railing against glorifying violence, but the film itself glorifies it with no sense of irony. The Condemned got the same reaction.

Hypocritical Humor: In the review of Scissors, he says that the main character's broken doll collection is much more than just a hobby, it's an obsession. He then turns around to look at his own massive DVD collection while a scare chord plays.

I Am Not Leonard Nimoy: During Steven Seagal movies, FB doesn't refer to the lead by character name, just as Seagal.

Idiot Plot: He has a catchphrase to describe this trope: "Why don't they just (insert smarter course of action here)? Oh right, because we wouldn't have a movie!/Oh right, because the plot says so!" invoked

He also points out that Jackson Curtis of 2012 is this, actually comparing him to Jesus later on in the review.

In John Cena's The Marine, he repeatedly lampshades Cena's ability to shrug off explosions at point blank range. During the cameo from Critical Marine, he asks at what point during the marine training he acquired superpowers, to Critical Marine's obvious disdain.

A Good Day to Die Hard leads to him concluding that John McClane had superpowers to explain how he managed to survive so many long-distance falls into painful things.

It's Been Done: According to the Breaking Wind review, this is why he refuses to review any of the Twilight films.

Jitter Cam: Mocked more than a couple of times, though his early episodes also tried (and failed) at a guerilla-style shoot.

Karma Houdini: Points out in the Killers review that Tom Selleck's character gets off ridiculously light for repeatedly trying to have his son-in-law killed, being forgiven essentially because he's the heroine's father and because he does a Heel–Face Turn once his assassins go rogue and start trying to kill his daughter too. The most he gets is a tongue-lashing from his daughter, which is Played for Laughs.

Keet: Many people thought Buck was acting out of character in Kickassia because of what he's like during "Bad Movie Beatdown", but he has said himself that his real-life personality is usually closer to the Kickassia persona, and that Kickassia had enough Deadpan Snarker characters already, and another would have been redundant. This turns into Red Oni, Blue Oni when he reviews on enthusiastic mode along with someone a little more ill-tempered, such as The Cinema Snob or JesuOtaku.

Linkara: Holy crap, Frank Miller makes worse puns than you, Film Brain! Film Brain: I never thought such a thing could be accomplished.

Not that Linkara is blameless there either:

Film Brain: Did he just break the fourth wall?Linkara: Don't worry - we're atop it! Audience: [Collective Groan] Caption:Channel Awesome would like to apologise for that pun. The writer has been flogged for his sins.

Mean Character, Nice Actor: Much like his coworker Brad Jones, he's definitely not as much of a snob as he acts on-screen. Most notable in Kickassia where he plays a very different character to his usual style. Most of the other critic cameos that appear along with Film Brain have them verbally eviscerating each other, but, obviously, they wouldn't cross over in the first place if they didn't like each other in real life.

Medal of Dishonor: When he reviewed Fat Slags, he named it as the absolute worst film he had ever featured on the show, with The Cavern being the only one to seriously challenge it for that title in the years since. Additionally, he named The Art of War III: Retribution as the worst action film he had ever watched, and also found it to contain both the worst opening sequence and the worst gunfight he had ever seen (though at least found the latter to be hilariously bad).

Mis-blamed: In response to fan complaints, Film Brain and Lordhebe said in an interview that the first review with Professor Celluloid was filmed the week before Spoony unveiled Dr Insano, but not released until the week after, making this inevitable. Coincidentally, they also filmed the review for Transmorphers the same week Spoony reviewed its sequel on a whim.

In the remake of The Time Machine, the protagonist saves his original love interest from dying in the first timeline but then she gets killed anyway, proving that You Can't Fight Fate. Unfortunately, the way it happened makes Film Brain burst out laughing over how silly he thought it was.

Film Brain laughs at the ridiculous CG fish in Mega Piranha twice.

He finds Awake to be full of this, mostly because of the acting of Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alba, and the sheer failure of portraying medical procedures accurately.

2012 features a scene regarding a earthquake Mathew finds hilarious for displaying the characters' stupidity (as a family is somehow ignorant of the destruction all around the world before being killed).

No Bisexuals: In his review of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, he noted that the plot point of Chuck "cheating" on Larry with women could have easily been covered up if Chuck claimed to be a bisexual and their relationship was open.

He states that he's not making up that Urkel from Family Matters (Jaleel White) starred in an Asylum movie while he was in the middle of editing a review of another movie starring 80s pop star Tiffany.

He also didn't make up the teacup and saucer explosives from The Specialist.

During the review of "Bear", he explains the ludicrous twist the bear is sentient and aware of the character's various misdeeds and arranged the entire scenario to punish them and bring it all into the open, in a dramatic fashion as if he was joking, the groans and tells the audience he wished he was making it up.

Offscreen Teleportation: He alludes to this in the While She Was Out and Mega Piranha reviews. Notably, in Mega Piranha, the hero did this.

The Oner: Criticized in a scene in "One Night Stand" where Wesley Snipes's character walks down a street and exposits to the camera. He states that doing this serves no real purpose as the scene only serves as blatant (clumsy) exposition, and it (along with addressing the audience) just seems awkward and out of place with the rest of the film. He even notes that the movie couldn't even pull of a oner as it's noticeably cut in the middle, presumably because Wesley Snipes get through the whole thing in one take.

Film Brain will often start the show with a text screen voluntarily advising viewers with a warning of Epileptic Flashing Lights and other possibly sickening visual effects within a film if it contains them.

The review of the Get Carter remake starts with a warning that the video contains major spoilers for the original 1971 film.

From All About Steve, Sandra Bullock was doing a monologue about curse words and the right time to use them. FB's response is a simple "Shut the fuck up".

Before that, and probably his most effective use of this trope, in his Seven Pounds review: "The movie is literally telling us that suicide is okay as long as you donate your organs. What the fuck kind of message is that?"

And again during his review of Ultraviolet, when reacting to the chasm-sized plot holes created by the reveal of Daxos being a hemophage.

And again in his 2012 review: "If Yellowstone erupted, we'd be fucked. Really, REALLY fucked."

Pretty Fly for a White Guy: He tries to use to urban slang at the start of his crossover review with The Rap Critic, who is just as impressed as one would expect an African-American rap music critic faced with a white English guy trying to be "street" would be.

Retool: Starting with The Imitation Game and '71, "Projector" switched from covering one film per episode to a pair, sometimes with a similar theme. Single reviews are now used for special episodes instead.

Whenever the audio is poorly synced in a scene, he replies by saying "I'm a ventriloquist!" (or "[Actor name] is a ventriloquist!") - complete with deliberately out of sync lip movements (or none at all).

"Because when you need to add substance to your shitty movie, just add Nazis"

Shown Their Work: Film Brain clearly puts tons of research into the movies he reviews for his Bad Movie Beatdowns. In fact, when he was the guest for Transmission Awesome, he was asked a few questions about film trivia by the hosts and answered all of them correctly, save for a rather obscure question about the 2007 Transformers film.

Spin-Off: Projector. A neutral series covering new releases. Definitely not a replacement for BMB.

Spot of Tea: Film Brain needs an exceptionally strong cuppa to get himself through Moon 44. When that's not enough, he goes for something stronger.

Straw Character: Points out in his One Night Stand review that Thomas Haden Church's character turns out to be homophobic solely to make the philandering, drug-smoking protagonist look enlightened by comparison.

Also seen in The Ugly Truth, where an antagonist turns out to be a rape apologist because it's the only way the misogynist protagonist can look good.

Subverted Catchphrase: When four white crosses appear in While She Was Out, he does a confused, uncertain version of his "Symbolism" catchphrase, saying it slowly and in a normal voice. He even slowly raises his arms.

From Gone Fishin': "You know, it's scenes like this, where Joe Pesci repeatedly punches and kicks a clearly fake prop alligator in a scene that even kids would likely find stupid, that make me wish they could revoke Oscars. Well, that, and the entirety of Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s career."

In his crossover review of "Sunday School Musical" with Todd in the Shadows, they point out that the film seems to indicate "the blacker you are, the better you sing". Case in point, the rival choir is all black and the Crossroads choir is all white and sucked before Zack (who is black) was forced to join them.

Also calls this on how the "slutty" character in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning died; apparently for the crime of liking BDSM, she is tied up in the same way she tied up her boyfriend earlier in the film and raped by the Hewitt family's Creepy Uncle, then has all her teeth pulled out one by one and finally gets her throat slashed with scissors. This is easily the most torturous death in a film replete with chainsaw-murder, and it's very easy to interpret as the filmmakers feeling she deserved it just for being a bit kinkier than the other characters.

In Prometheus, it's revealed that the automated surgical unit is only calibrated for male patients. As Film Brain says in the review, WOMEN AREN'T AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SPECIES!!!!

Film Brain criticized what he saw as a No, Except Yes approach to stereotypes in The Love Guru; the main character is an American raised in India, and as such the film treats it as okay for him to act like a ridiculous Indian stereotype.

Villain Ball: Film Brain's interpretation of the actions of the Colonel Diaz in Mega Piranha. And indeed it seems very odd that he'd follow them to the U.S. and shoot down a U.S. navy helicopter just so he can try to capture the heroes after they killed the piranhas.

Vocal Evolution: As of the 2013 episodes, he seemed to get a lot higher-pitched and animated, sometimes sounding rather whiny. His voice returned to its usual pitch in 2014, but the more upbeat delivery has stayed. According to his Twitter, he changed his delivery on purpose to counter complaints that he was too monotone, but feels that he overshot it a little.

The Watson: The rest of his cast, but usually forum moderator Lordhebe.

He points this out frequently in his Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End review, with the rampant amount of death and innuendo, especially the hanging of a child in the beginning of a film marketed towards children.

In the Jack and Jill review, Film Brain criticizes the film's usage of adult-oriented humor (i.e, jokes about religion and hookers) despite being targeted at a younger audience by being rated PG.

Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: In League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, invokes this when M escapes in Nemo's exploration pod, despite the fact that everyone is armed and the Nautilus has just shown it has rockets on board!

Adding up the years in Hudson Hawk put the movie ten years before it was supposed to take place.

Also in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, he takes note that while five Decepticons went down to the ocean floor to revive Megatron, one had to be torn apart for pieces and yet over the radio, a solider claims that six Decepticons are at the bottom floor.

In his review for Texas Chainsaw 3D Film Brain nearly has a stroke when he points out that Heather was born in 1973 and the movie takes place in 2012, therefore she should be 39 years old and not the 20-something we see onscreen.

Film Brain: "This isn't even a little thing, this is a fundamental plot hole that sinks the entire movie. They were two decades out! This movie had hundreds of people working on it. How do you miss a huge detail like this?"

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